How do you help someone emotionally

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What do you do when an acquaintance?s emotional state is marred by pain, suffering and hopelessness?

If they helped me before, I remind them. No matter what you do, we're talking about how to create a familial sense and to do so, personally I always pat shoulders, hold hands or just hug people. Yeah, that was a lot of wriggly anxiety I suffered through to learn my ways, but they do as much for me as they ever could for people in need.

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-Gem Tos

Talking is best thing.

Personally, I do nothing, particularly when it comes to mere acquaintances. When I'm in such a state, my emotions are not amenable to the influence of others, and so I have no idea how others' emotions would be amenable to my influence, and thus no idea how to help them.

If it's an acquaintance I let their actual friends help them unless they specifically approach me.
If it's a friend, I'll listen, acknowledge that they're feeling bad, acknowledge that the stuff they're feeling bad about sucks, and offer advice to make things better if I can.

I have problems with this too, because people say that a lot of times that i hear that someone is having some kind of problem i immediately start to try to find a solution and people think i'm too cold because of this... What i think is: Why is someone telling me a problem if it's not for me to help them find a solution?
I remember that once in high school a girl was talking to me about how she and her boyfriend were fighting and how he was pissing her because he coudn't even see her talking to another boy without "fighting" (not sure if this is the right word, i don't mean anything physical) with her later. I said to her: Well, just leave him.
She said: But i like him.
Me: But he is pissing you off, just leave him.
She spent some minutes telling how much she liked him and whenever i had the opportunity to talk i just said that she should leave him. After some minutes into this she said i couldn't understand how that situation was hard for her and ended up calling me "too cold" and never talked to me again.
Situations like this have happened to me A LOT during my whole life where i analyze others people problems and tell them some kind of solution but they say that "is not that simple".
Maybe is a lack of empathy problem or that "black or white" thing that we autistics do sometimes but i still don't know how to work on this.

I think I'd want others not to care about it unless I specifically ask questions or ask for help. But that's not an advice; also, I probably wouldn't even talk about it unless I'm asking questions or for help.